imagine them happy
by owedbetter
Summary: "What's the point seeing it all at all now, anyway? What would be the point in rolling this boulder?" Inextricably, the Doctor and Clara Oswald are led to find each other once again. / Post-Hell Bent & THoRS fix-it. Slow burn.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Depression tw. Take caution.

* * *

" _He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it._ "

Albert Camus, " _The Myth of Sisyphus"_

* * *

Clara.

The name came ringing like the soft, distant tintinnabulation of wind chimes lightly kissed by sea breeze. It came with the faint scrape and scratch of chalk on board. He panted. The vein in his temple pulsed like mad. He could feel his hearts racing and something that felt like acid, like molten gold, felt like it was creeping up his throat but when he coughed, there was nothing there. Nothing came out. In his head was just the constant squawking of a name he should have forgotten by now, probably, but couldn't. Shouldn't. Wouldn't.

What was infuriating was that it was just the name of her—just her name and nothing else.

Clara.

 _Clara, Clara Clara_.

Not her face, not her voice, not her hair, not how the blades of her fingers felt warm and petal soft against his own that were cold and wrinkled and calloused; he knew that he'd known all of these things in the time that they had together but he couldn't remember them, he couldn't picture it, and it was just about enough to drive him mad now. He has been like this for the last few days – just a few weeks since the departure of his latest companion – and he couldn't understand what had triggered this phenomenon within him.

Forgetting her had worked out for him, he knew. For his story. Initially, he'd looked but distractions kept happening and there were too many adventures to be had to waste time trying to piece something together when he didn't have all the parts. Except it wasn't a waste of time to look for Clara, no; it was just that it hurt too much, he knew, and he didn't know what to do about it—so he ran away because _that_ was something he knew how to do very well.

The memory of her, however, refused to be forgotten forever.

He could hear it now, the echoes of chalk against board as something, someone in his subconscious wrote her name in his mind's eye over and over and over again. It was the haunting of a memory that begged and fought to be remembered – wilted stargazers on a tombstone he couldn't remember visiting but mourned all the same. The whispers of a ghost in the hallways of his mind, growing in the hole she'd left behind, lining his hearts like a cancer that refused to be anything but alive.

 _I'm alive,_ she said in a voice he could not remember. _I'm still here._ _Please, just see me._

"Clara," he muttered to no one but himself as he dragged his palms down his face. When his palms fell to the console, they landed with pressure—the aftermath of pent up anger and frustration as the drumbeat of her name in his head refused to be silenced. Pain pulsated up his veins and each ringing vibration sounded and felt like her name.

Clara.

 _Clara, Clara, Clara._

Her name—the lyrics of a song you somehow knew all the words to but you didn't have the faintest clue on how you did but her name rolled off his tongue like he'd sung her song a thousand times before; his lips spoke every syllable of her name like the thunder-clack of heels on a yellow brick road and if he closed his eyes and prayed, he knew there was no place like her.

 _There was no place like home._

The Doctor hadn't thought about Clara in years.

How many years, he couldn't tell—time was always difficult to discern for a Time Lord, especially when the person you were trying to think of was a time traveller too.

He had no idea how long it has been for her or how long it has even been for him. It has been a long, long while was all he knew. And he hasn't thought about her actively in so long that for the echo of her name, and just her name, to ring out from the back of mind was discomforting. It was difficult to think about something, about someone you couldn't remember—and it was even more difficult to forget something you wish you _could_. Trying to remember her was like staring at a black hole and willing for it to return the light it had consumed. Like staring at the tip of your tongue for the word you were looking for but you knew it wouldn't come. But he looked anyway, hoping he might find her somewhere in some distant event horizon.

Why? Because it was impossible—and wasn't that exactly what she was? He could remember that, at least.

He snapped his hand up from his musing and pressed his palm to his face. He let it rest there and scratched his cheek; rough bristles of stubble made themselves known to his touch. He wiped the sweat from his brow and exhaled. The TARDIS hummed around him, a melancholy tune, like she knew exactly what was going on with him—and of course she knew; his old girl always knew.

 _So did she,_ said a voice at the back of his head. Clara always knew too.

He'd been bent over the console, pounding headache and all as her name washed over him like tidal wave after tidal wave and could weather even the most stubborn mountains. There were pieces of his barricade drifting father and farther away and he could feel it, the drizzle before the hurricane—and, see, building a dam won't teach you how to wade through the flooding of sorrow when the walls break, when forty days and nights come pouring all at once, and the only thing left to do was drown.

He should not have forgotten her, he mused, but the time for regret has long since passed.

He had not allowed himself to do that, to regret what had become of them, in the years where he'd enjoyed the bliss of his ignorance. But now that the protection was wearing off, the pain resurfacing, he hadn't a clue on how to stay afloat without the memory of her smile to guide him home to shore.

The Doctor shut his eyes, brows furrowed, as he furiously commanded the entirety of his enormous mental prowess to reclaim that one memory—just let him see her smile in his mind's eye, just let him remember at least that much.

Clara.

 _Clara, Clara, Clara._

He chanted her name like a prayer in his head, begging his consciousness for even the smallest hint of her to come back to light, forgetting why he even chose to forget her in the first place—something, anything of her to hold on to other than her name, other than the empty stories and songs of travel that were all that was left of her in him. He grunted when nothing came to mind. Just a louder shout of her name in the recesses of his mind, like Hope buried deep in the darkness of Pandora's Box—there was nothing left but chalk writing on the walls.

"Stupid Doctor," he muttered to himself. "Stupid, stupid Doctor."

He slumped back to his seat and buried his face in his hands. He took to muttering her name over and over again, like that might spark his mind to remember something about her. He could feel it, though—the feeling of missing her slowly seeped into him like morphine on a drip and he was helpless to do anything but miss her after so long of forgetting her. The Doctor looked up, staring at the glowing light that pulsed in the middle of the console. He stared at her light long and hard for a moment and exhaled.

A beat later, his head snapped up. He looked around.

There was something different about the main console room, there was something new. His senses were on high alert, quick to be on his feet, and his hands steady and still as if he were calming a wild animal. It was overwhelming to concentrate on this one thing – distractions were necessary for a mind as active as his – and when his eyes darted all over the room, that was when he saw it. But a sliver of paper on the floor, near the main door.

The Doctor's brows furrowed for the TARDIS was not one to be so easily breeched and he could distinctly remember there not being an envelope on the floor… some time ago. It might have been a few minutes, an hour, maybe a week—the thing about him was that he was often slow to action for his mind kept leaping from one thing to the next in breakneck speed that processing often took its time to follow. He has always been slow, he'd always said he was, but this was just different.

With caution, he approached the envelope as if he were approaching an explosive that was just about to go off. When he'd gotten near enough, he realised that it was addressed to him; The Doctor, written in circular Gallifreyan. It couldn't be River, he knew; this was not her style and it simply could not be her. Not anymore. So who else could have written to him in this manner, then? Who else knew?

He picked up the envelope and inside was a card, also written in the same way, that he'd found it a plea for help. There was no name signed to it and the sentences were brief and short. _Fate of the universe at stake,_ it said. _Need help. Disguise required. Come alone._ Affixed were coordinates for a time traveller—bespoke instructions for him. He stared at the card and he frowned at it.

This was almost certainly a trap. He could feel it in his gut. Yet, with his curiosity piqued and his system grateful for the distraction, he set himself to work immediately.

Trying to remember Clara, it seemed, would have to wait.

* * *

"You're still thinking of going back soon, aren't you?"

Clara hadn't heard the door open.

Then again, Me was always light on her feet. It was a skill she didn't remember learning, she'd say, it was just that her feet knew the way how still. It was both a preference and a precaution, she knew, but it didn't stop her from the jolt of straightening up her spine immediately and snapping her leather-bound journal closed shut.

Hers was a different cloaking skill — a habit, really, acquired long before her current state of impossibility – and it was for her lips to quirk up to a smile at nearly every greeting, no matter her then-state. British-brand politeness in this Lancashire-born girl, embedded into her muscles; as was the way her hand quickly lifted to wipe away the tears she hadn't noticed she'd shed as she wrote. Clara gave her a look that played on innocent, all wide eyes and an almost pout, almost hoping against hope that Me would not press the subject, to which she was replied to with a look that questioned her—one with a raised brow that said ' _You heard me._ '

"Maybe."

Instead of one brow, Me raised both and pursed her lips. She crossed her arms against her chest. Clara kept her composure though she broke the stare first as she slid the journal atop the table before her. Veins on her neck were prominent, though there was no sign of the rise and fall of a pulse in them, as she kept posture rigid and firm, not breaking the façade.

"Clara—" Me started but Clara shrugged, keeping her eyes distinctly away from her companion.

"I've been putting it off for a while now, haven't I? And I— I don't know. Probably, yeah, but I mean—" she broke off as she made the mistake of looking at Me. Those were old eyes that stared back at her. Old eyes that were denied the privilege of aging—ones that looked at her with a kind of knowing that she could not as easily lie to. Me, of course, was leagues better with deception than she was. She had the advantage of billions of years of experience and there, too, rest a brand of kindred compassion only they could understand—they, in a perennial state of grieving. Clara sighed. Her shoulders relaxed as she did and she took to looking out the library's window. "Don't you wish it too? Sometimes? To just… be done with it all, if you really wanted to?"

Me approached without invitation—then again, she didn't need it. She took the seat opposite her friend and placed the small silver tray she'd been holding next to the hefty journal. Clara didn't look. In her nightdress, she'd simply lifted her legs so that she could hold her knees against her chest.

"Sometimes, yes. I do. Of course I do," said Me, lounging into the chair, elbow resting on the arm rest, hand lazily gesturing up in the air.

Where Clara took a penchant to fidgeting and fumbling with her fingers as she spoke, Me was the immovable kind, perfectly comfortable in the slow stillness. Though both women held wreckages beneath their own brands of serene surfaces—they'd both survived too many storms for their bones not to be etched with epitaphs and obituaries that weren't theirs.

Me looked to where Clara averted her gaze.

"There are ways that I could go, sure. It would be rather morbid to discuss but nothing's absolutely unkillable. Not really. Not even me," she said, a small smile on her lips that her friend did not quite catch. She'd been lost in looking into the horizon to notice. Me dropped the smile almost as soon as it had appeared and her then-nonchalant tone softened as she continued. "But there's still just so much to see, Clara. And you've got the chance to see so much more than what you would have gotten."

"I know," she replied. Her voice was quiet and small. She looked to the table, staring at absolutely nothing at all, and her exhale relieved none of the burden that thinking too much cursed upon you. Clara knew that Me was right, of course she was right. She'd said the same words and had proclaimed the same sentiments over and over again but the thing was that they were easier said than believed. She took a breath slowly and sighed.

In Grecian times, there was the myth of a King—King Sisyphus of Ephyra.

Depending on the version one read, it was often unclear if he was either the hero of his tale or the fool of a story much bigger than his own. Most philosophers would say that he was both. He was widely regarded as one of the cleverest of men to the point that he believed it. He'd been one who then became so drunk on his own cleverness, on his own avarice and arrogance, blinded to his mortality and limitations that he'd dared to deceive the gods themselves in both life and in death.

In retribution, the gods cursed him eternally to be chained upon a rock where he was condemned to roll a boulder up a steep hill only for it to roll back down so that he might roll it back up again. Again and again and again, this was the punishment the gods deemed worthy of him—the ultimate humbling for one to have thought oneself so invincible, to be reduced to an endless, cyclical chore that was both effortful but futile.

All of the reasons Me was about to say, Clara Oswald had already heard before and had even told herself time and again and yet, still, the Sisyphean question plagued her.

 _What's the point seeing it all at all now, anyway? What would be the point in rolling this boulder?_

The two women remained quiet in the poignant pause that occurred between them, thoughts racing in the silence and multiple conversations happening in the air to which none of their assumptions or questions were answered. Clara continued to look out the window. Me looked at Clara.

The library of Me's temporary abode here on this planet during her extended stay and study of the universe and of life was one that had a truly spectacular view—dry mountains upon an ammophilous terrain, asteroids floating at thousands of miles per hour yet looked to move so much slower than a fallen leaf to her human eyes with the gleaming Pyramid metropolis among them, and a darkened used-to-be sun somewhere mixed among the backdrop of the dark void that was spattered with constellations.

"Have you tried to look for him since—"

"No," she snapped, her head turning to face her. No, this was not something they talked about. That was decided long ago. Momentarily, her shoulders went rigid but they just as soon dropped. Her voice softened. "You know that."

Another pause.

"Are you really thinking about it?" Me asked.

For someone so old, her voice still had the melody of a teenager's lilt. Clara had grown accustomed to it over the years and yet, when Me asked that question, she could not help but feel like she was looking at a frightened young Viking girl again—a girl called Ashildr who was brave, a girl who loved fiercely and recklessly, a girl who'd thought she'd brought bad luck to all those who had the misfortune of knowing her, a girl who saved the people she loved with a story. She looked at the girl then, a melancholy smile on her lips as she remembered.

"All the time," she answered. "More so these days. It's silly, I know—"

"I don't think it's silly."

"I know _you_ don't," she said, almost laughing—but there was no heart in it. How could there be? She felt warmth well up in her eyes and she wiped it away with her hand before it had a chance to fall. She was still smiling for a reason that she could not explain; maybe it was just to allow some semblance of levity with the subject matter at hand.

"I don't know. I'm just…" Clara continued. She sighed again. "I'm just tired now. I'm so tired, Me."

"I know you are," Me replied and let her eyes fall for the first time. Downcast gaze as she pondered, her expression betrayed nothing. She shrugged then and said, "Well, think it through. I certainly won't stop you."

Clara scoffed and rolled her eyes.

"I bet you wouldn't," she joked.

"Do you need me to go with you now?"

"No, no. Not yet, I know that much. You stay right here. Get your fill. I just wanted to pop by and visit. See how you were doing. You hadn't called in a while; I just wanted to make sure you hadn't been executed again."

"It was _one_ time," Me groaned. It was her turn, then, to roll her eyes but she smirked as well.

"I'm counting the firing squad in World War II."

"I didn't even _die_ that time!"

"Still sentenced to death."

"They missed."

"And the ropes I had to pull just to get that off the records!" Clara exclaimed, chuckling as they both recalled the memory. "You're the worst."

Me smiled. She raised a hand, fingers lightly held under her chin. "It's been fun, hasn't it?"

"Yeah, it has."

"What happened to your last one, by the way?"

"Oh, she was proper good, that one. Total fairytale. We found out she was actually the Duke's daughter so she ended up inheriting all his lands and titles. _And_ his responsibilities. So she stayed behind."

"She left for _that?_ "

"She _stayed_ for that. For them, for her new people," Clara said. She let go of her knees and allowed for her legs to stretch back down. Me knew that there was more to the story and so she waited—despite the years that they both now had under their belt, Me had always been better at being patient. Clara played with her hands, palms rubbing against each other. "There's something honourable in not walking away from the people you care about… don't you think? If you _can_ stay, at least."

"I suppose," Me replied, knowing exactly what Clara implied. Their conversation had wandered, again, to something that they did not talk about. "So what will you do now?"

"Wander about, I reckon. The way I always do."

"You're itching for a planet to save, aren't you?"

"Tiny bit, yeah."

"How many does that make that now?" Me asked. Clara made a face – furrowed brows, bunched up retroussé nose, pursed lips.

"Nine hundred, seventy two mil. Give or take."

"Almost to your first, then," she said. "You will tell me if you decide to go, won't you?"

"Of course," Clara replied, smiling now. "You worry too much."

"Someone has to." Clara's smile grew to a grin. Me smiled back, eyes landing upon the silver tray again and she asked, "Did you sleep well?"

It was a joke between them that only they would understand. The look Me gave said it all. Clara pressed her tongue to the walls of her hollowed cheeks and raised her brows. It turned to a grimace and wiggled her nose.

"As well as I could, given the circumstances. Thanks for asking."

"Good. Because a letter came for you this morning. After your arrival made news yesterday."

She put the silver tray, atop which the letter rest as well as a thin letter opening, on top of the journal. Clara reached for it immediately.

"My arrival is news for the Sun Singers of Akhet?"

"It _is_ when you arrive by magical appearing diner to this estate I'd acquired and when you're a dear friend of the Queen of Years."

"The Queen? You mean Merry? _Merry Gelejh?_ Merry's still the Queen of Years after all these… years?"

"Evidently so. The letter was sent straight from her Majesty's palace. Look at the sigil," she said, finger gesturing for Clara to turn the envelope around. She didn't use the opener as she simply broke the wax seal to open it. Me continued, "To the Sun Singers, it's only been fifteen years since the last Festival of Offerings when you saved them all."

"Merry must be so grown up by now. Does she want to see me?"

"Read it. Find out."

"It's an invitation," she said as her eyes skimmed over the parchment and read her name, neatly and clearly written in the script of a familiar hand. Whose hand, however, she could not place. "Some sort of party, maybe? A ball? Festival?" She kept reading. "Oooh, hang on. No it's not—it's..."

"Trouble?"

"I think so," she replied. " _'Come alone, be in disguise, fate of the seven systems and the universe at large in the balance, this matter should be taken with the utmost discretion, time-space coordinates'_ —oh, I know a trap when I see one," she said, tongue slipping between her teeth as she grinned.

" _Love_ a good trap, don't you?" she added. Me cringed. Clara smirked. "Bad joke? Come on, it's been a few billion years for you—don't tell me it's still too soon."

"Are you going?" Me asked, quickly changing the subject. "Now?"

"Suppose I will. I've been invited, haven't I? Be rude not to." Clara rose from her chair while her companion remained where she was sat. "Got to drop by Nino's for a disguise, probably, but yeah. Sounds like fun."

"You'll be careful, though."

"Of course." Clara folded the letter back into itself, tucked it into the journal she gathered in her arms, and shrugged.

"What could happen, right?" Me nodded. She nodded back. "I'll be seeing you, then. Don't get into too much trouble."

That was their way—this was how they traveled.

Sometimes together but usually apart, simply because it was far too dangerous for two quasi-immortal women to go gallivanting around throughout all of space and time without causing too much damage. They learned that early on and it worked this way. Clara would go into her TARDIS and fly away, run as far as she could go and have adventures of her own while she picked up companions every now and then. Me, on the other hand, picked a planet or a star system to linger in for a prolonged period of time—sometimes a year, sometimes the entire place's lifetime. It rather depended on how she felt about it.

And yet, with the way Clara walked away then, Me could not help but look at her, to the friend who had become so dear to her, with deep regret in her heart.

Clara had always harboured a profound, lachrymose, but unspoken sorrow in her eyes since the day she'd last seen him, Me knew, and it was something they did not talk about. Not really. Not even when Me tried. Like she'd purposely drowned herself in the waters of her sadness, perfectly capable of breaking the surface for air but choosing to keep herself in the depths beneath, where it was darker than dark. It often hurt to look upon and though Clara did not often linger on it when with company – present or otherwise, Me knew – anyone who saw her and really looked at her could see those young, immortal eyes with the oldest, perennial heartbreak she'd ever seen in her long, long life.

But all Clara saw was a distraction—a welcome one, at that.

Anything would be preferable than to linger in memories only she, now, could still remember.


	2. Chapter 2

" _The soft lines of these hills and the hand of evening on this trouble heart teach me much more. I have returned to my beginning._ "

\- Albert Camus, _The Myth of Sisyphus_

* * *

"And you're sure? Actually, properly sure?"

Clara, on her knees, held Merry by the arms.

At this height, they were level with each other and Clara's new blue-green-hazel eyes held the same expression of a firm mother's warmth in them. It took some convincing – what with her disguise – that it was her in the first place.

Clara Oswald, after all, did not have gold ringlets circling her unusually less circular face. Her skin was usually sunkissed and bronzed with the barest hint of still youthful, amaranthine smile lines by her eyes—not this sweet, soft fairness with roses on her cheeks in place of where dimples should've been. Even her voice was modulated differently, a higher pitch than what she was used to – a trick she'd learnt with Me's assistance – to complete it.

Though why the disguise was necessary in the first place, she had yet to know, for no one else seemed to be in disguise at this cosmic royal ball other than herself. Merry, for instance, couldn't have looked more than three years older than when Clara had last seen her so very, very long ago—back when things weren't so complicated. To look at the pair of them, one might imagine that Clara was the girl's mother. The red of her regal robes lined and decorated with swirling gold patterns reminded her of other things, of other memories that she would rather forget but could not help but always, always remember.

A haunting shadow, grief made gravity that was the only weight in these hollow bones—these were what these buried memories were now in the graveyard of her veins.

Her gaze remained focused towards the girl's – soft but stern – and the little queen scrunched her brows in contemplation for a moment and nodded in answer.

"Of course."

Clara sighed. "Didn't Me tell you anything?"

"I'm sorry?" Merry raised a brow.

"Me."

"You?"

"No, no. _Lady Me_ ," Clara said. "That's her _name_. Surely you—" the penny dropped "—oh my stars, you haven't met Lady Me yet."

"Who's Lady Me?"

"A friend of mine. You gave her permission to set up an estate in an empty asteroid around Akhet's belt," she explained. Merry's expression remained unchanged from 'puzzled' though her hands were balled into fists at her sides and wiped her palms at the sides of her robes. Clara didn't notice and she merely shrugged. "Well, you will now, apparently. Now it makes sense as to how she got that rock so damn quickly."

"I'm not sure I follow—" Merry started. "Do you think there's going to be trouble?"

"I don't know. Probably, if someone went through all of that trouble to get me here in the first place," Clara mused as she let her eyes drift far beyond the scene.

Hundreds of people lingered in the spacious, cosmic ballroom—all of them in a state of frivolously decadent fancy dress. Her with her simple dark blue dress with holographic fabric that displayed a multitude of constantly shifting, and even some shooting, stars—one of Clara's favourite dresses from her personal stock? She felt remarkably underdressed, compared to the other guests at this ball.

Though despite the display of luxury that was to the point of ludicrous, there was something about the air of it all that felt wrong—she knew what traps felt like.

 _I've got a bad feeling about this,_ she thought.

Not that she could tell Merry this, of course; her faraway gaze was that of one that marked her as distracted, the surface of her cool never reflecting the whirlpools of worry beneath. Clara smiled at Merry and tucked the girl's hair behind her ears.

"Don't you worry, though. I've got this," she said. She raised a brow. "Do you trust me?"

"Absolutely," Merry replied, grinning. Clara did the same.

"Good girl."

"But where's the Doctor?"

If there were anything that could break through that ice thin façade of hers, it was that.

It was that name.

It was _him_.

Clara's smile faltered almost instantly — the mirth from these faux eyes, not quite as wide, slipping away like smoke from a snuffed out candle – and sobered. Merry noticed and a troubled look graced the girl's features and Clara brought back her smile, though tighter than the one before. More forced, more melancholy. A malfunctioning smile, he'd told her once—she was sad but she was smiling. She did a lot of that these days.

"I'm on my own now. Mostly," she answered.

"Is he okay?" Merry asked quietly.

"Yeah, he is. He's good, he's happy," she replied. Her eyes shone and though she smiled, she could hardly convince anyone. Swiftly did she then rub Merry's arms before she rose to her feet. "Now don't blow my cover, alright? I'm technically crashing this ball now, even if I did have an invite."

"I won't," the girl replied just as quick. Tactful girl, this one. "I could ask around, maybe? See if there's anything… _sneaky_ —" bless her from whispering, as if she were an accomplice in Clara's plan (that had yet to be properly formulated, really) "—going on?"

"Good idea," Clara replied. She straightened her back and brushed her hands on her skirts.

"Okay," said the little queen. Clara winked at her.

Just as they were about to part, however, was she then surprised by the littler arms that were suddenly wrapped around her waist, at the warmth that was suddenly pressed against her middle. For a second, Clara froze at the touch; her hands still from when she'd lifted them at either side of her. Merry hugged her and after that second of surprise, Clara hugged her back.

"It's good to see you, Clara," the girl whispered.

"You too, Merry."

* * *

Surveillance.

That was the job and it was something with which Clara had found herself increasingly familiar with in her years and years of often solitary traveling. It had become a hobby, almost—watching people and watching them live their lives. From the fallen ice cream of a young child who then begged and cried for another, to the secret rendezvous of forbidden lovers from one world to the next—the stories were always one and the same, usually. She liked watching them. She liked seeing their stories unfold – these little trivialities with each day marking a significant page in their lives though they did not themselves see it.

Though where Me had grown apathetic and near cold to mortality, Clara found herself thinking fondly of it, of this life that she too once had, once upon a time. There was something precious in the finite that only a rare few really understood and even rarer actually appreciated.

Where her still heart should have hardened, it only became raw. A thousand fresh cuts every single day, with more and more feeling. If the universe was cold and distant and uncaring—it was the curse of the likes of her to care where it didn't. To care so deeply and so profoundly that even these many, many years have never made her cruel or cowardly. Never again. It only made her kind – these everlasting but so very, very finite lives serving as a constant reminder of the debt she had to pay, and the duty to which she'd bound herself.

For them.

 _For him_.

Clara walked amongst them unseen and unbothered. In attendance were two-headed creatures with headpieces that had more stilled starlight gems than some constellations had. There were skeletal soldiers dressed in purple garb, armed with colourful sabers made of laser lights that would have delighted a teenage Clara Oswald to no end.

There were the towering Nangavs standing to their full height of 14 fet, and cotton tailed Neehaks with their forked tongues, and Askonkulgathroths, majestic in their banrystianoc armor, and many others. Some of the species, Clara could remember from sight alone from her past travels. Most of them, she'd helped in some form or another.

It made her smile to see a lot of them but there, too, lingered some creatures with which she was more familiar. Humanoid, like her—like the man just by the refreshment tables who looked to be doing much of the same thing she was. There were few who kept to themselves the way she was but there were even rare who were keeping such close eyes on everyone else in attendance.

Until she saw him, she thought it had just been her.

She stood there and looked until he looked her way and they locked eyes. Tall and dark, his skin warm and rich, and a short but scruffy full beard decorated near half his face. Automatically, he reminded her of someone she knew once before.

He did not look like _him_ , no, but it was enough of a resemblance to make her still where she stood. Her lips parted. In his hand was a glass of something he'd been handed and when he looked at her the way she did him, he did not notice the swift shadow that moved next to him, dropped something in his drink, and disappeared just as fast.

He held her gaze was just about the lift the glass to his lips. She broke into a swift run and reached him just as his full lips were about to touch the rim of the glass.

"Don't drink that," she told him in a rushed, breathless whisper.

"I'm sorry?" he asked. His accent rough, throaty, and indistinguishable.

"Someone—" she started and looked around. Her head turned every which way as she looked for the shadow that she knew put a small pill into his drink. Yet there was no one to be found. "What the—? I swear, someone just put something in your drink."

He looked at her, wary. His were bushy eyebrows that raised in trepidation of her accusation. She swallowed. Though she felt no heartbeat and had no need for heaving breaths, she knew the feeling of her throat closing up and her cheeks warming up with a flush—and her body remembered.

The stranger then dipped his single finger to the drink. He barely sucked on his finger before he spit it out and started coughing. Swift and instinctive, she had a hand tapping against his back while her other hand took the cup in his hands before he could drop it and she set it atop the buffet table. He reached for the desserts as soon as his coughing fits calmed down some and he stuffed chocolate bonbon after bonbon – wrapper and all – into his mouth and chewing without any modicum of grace.

Clara waited.

"Easy on those, they'll go straight to your hips," she joked when she found that his breathing had steadied and his grip on the tablecloth wasn't as tight anymore. "You okay?"

"Mrare mhriger," he grumbled, still chewing.

"I'm sorry?" she asked. He swallowed and cleared his throat.

"Pear cider," he replied after a cough. Clara inspected the cup and saw a pill still in the process of dissolving in the liquid. If she had to guess, it was nothing but a simple aspirin. "I'm terribly allergic."

"Pears have rarely done any good for me either," she told him, swirling the glass' contents around in the glass. "You sure you're okay?"

"I thought it was apple juice," he said, not answering again.

"They're fairly similar in scent. Try not to feel too betrayed."

"You said someone put something in my drink?"

"I swear on it, yes."

"But why—" he started but he was cut off by the shriek of a young girl with bright, curly, blonde hair bouncing behind her as she ran towards them.

"Cl— Miss Allison, Miss Allison!" she yelled.

"Your Majesty," Clara said with a bow of her head, her hand pressed against her heart. "Is it really proper for a young Queen to prance about all willy-nilly and yell at the top of her lungs while at a ball?"

"No, Miss Allison," Merry replied. "But Lady Salámangdoro's just arrived—the Regnant of Riñabu." Clara – Miss Allison – raised a brow in reply. Merry then continued, voice more urgent than before. "That's now every ruling monarch and regent protector in five galactic quadrants!"

Clara looked up from Merry, looking towards the newcomer in question. Salámangdoro was, indeed, among them. She remembered a little political matter she'd settled some generations before with an ancestor of this current monarch. She skimmed the crowd again and saw that her young ward was right. Of her inner musings, none of her concern was reflected upon her features.

"I'm sure it's nothing, Your Grace," she said after a moment's pondering. "Go sit with the Vigil if you're that anxious. They'll keep you safe."

Merry, for a moment, could not be convinced. Yet she looked up at Clara and the strange man with whom she'd just been acquainted – a back and forth and a back and forth – before she nodded and ran towards her guards.

"Kids and their imaginations, am I right?" she said to him, a smile on her lips and spoken as if it jest.

"You can lie to children but you can't lie to me," he said. Clara turned her head to look at him. "Children don't need to be lied to."

"Children don't need to be scared when they don't have to be," she retorted, hands crossed against her chest. "It's not their job to worry. It's ours."

"Is that Queen Merry Gelejh, then? Queen of Years of Akhet and the Seven Systems?" he asked.

"That she is."

"And you're the—?"

"Help," she answered, a knowing smile on her lips.

"A nanny?"

"I prefer governess," she replied, her smile turning into a smirk. "It makes me sound more important."

"Have you always been a governess?" he asked her.

"Have you always been this nosy?" she asked him.

"You don't seem like a governess," he said. It wasn't a question. Clara cocked her head and pressed the tip of her tongue to the wall of her cheek.

"Oh?" she asked. "And what do I seem like, then?"

"Lonely," he said, unfazed by her charm and transfixed to her own stare while his dark eyes were piercing. Her smile fell.

"That's presumptuous of you," she said.

"I'm right, though."

"Aren't we all?" she said, shrugging as she started to turn back.

The feeling was back—the thick air around them that smelled like a _trap_. She had a feeling at the back of her neck (the quantum shade's tattoo covered by her faux golden curls and the overall hardlight hologram disguise that she wore) that felt like goosebumps. There was something off. And someone had just tried to put something in his drink and he'd reacted to it so strongly—there was something going on and she needed to find out what.

But before she could move away, he spoke again and she could not help but turn around to face him once more.

"You're lonely. You're hiding. And you're scared; you won't admit it but you're not running away. You saw someone put something in my drink and you didn't call attention to it, you want to stay low key; you don't want your ward yelling and dancing about, you want her to stay put, unnoticed, and protected because you expect trouble."

"You're very full of yourself," she told him.

"Tell me I'm wrong."

"Who are you?" she whispered, mostly to herself, but lines formed between her brows and she leaned up to him. Clara hasn't paid attention to her breathing in so long but right then, she was hyperaware that she was holding it.

"Someone who knows that you know something I don't," he answered.

There was something in his eyes that was familiar—a depth, a knowing, a mystery—and he could hold his own to the shadow of melancholy that followed her around. He wiped his chocolate crumb-covered face and the severity of his gaze was an unspoken challenge, she gathered. They were two people of a similar agenda in this ball, as it seemed.

"Alright, here's a puzzle for you, then," she said. "You have just about every single monarch and regent protector of five galactic quadrants in one giant ballroom. And not a single one of them knows why they're here, not really, but the summons was powerful to convince them to be here and to not say a word to anyone else. Merry got hers because she was told of a pending invasion of separatists to revive the sun god of Akhet. I got mine because I was told Merry might be in danger. If you hold even just one guest here for ransom, you could make a fortune in credits, if money's all you're after. Kill just one and frame another? You could start an intergalactic war or—"

"Question," he said, cutting her off. "Why invite you?"

"Me?" she asked, losing the modulation of her voice—for a spell, she sounded exactly like herself. She coughed. He stared at her for a while, knit his brows together, and then went on.

"You said just about every single monarch and regent protector of five galactic quadrants was invited here for reasons they can't explain or won't say. You were invited _separately_ from Merry Gelejh."

"Your point?"

"You're not her governess," he said. "She was chosen as Queen from infancy, became of age at ten. She doesn't need a governess, not by their standards. So who _are_ you?"

"I'm an old friend," she answered, matching him blow for verbal blow. She stood up straighter then and seemed taller. Though he towered over her, and this was something she was used to, she stared him down. Clara continued, "And I have a duty of care."

"But why _you_?" he persisted.

" _You_ are asking a lot of questions."

"And you're not giving me any answers," he said, taking a step closer to her.

"Why should I?" she asked, taking a step closer to him.

"I—" And, for the first time, she did not have to cut him off. No other words left passed his open mouth and though he stared her down, she did not flinch. He froze and her lips twitched to a smirk when his eyes fell away from hers. "People usually just tell me what I want to know when I do the eye thing," he muttered, massaging the skin between his brows.

"Not going to be that easy, mate," she said, smiling. Clara shrugged and spared to look at the crown once more where nothing much had changed. They were still mingling and dancing and eating—not a care in the worlds for which they held power. "I don't know why I'm here either, aside from Merry. But if I had to guess—everyone here holds a position of power. Power doesn't just come from titles or whatever. _Some things_ are more valuable than money—stories that should never be spoken, secrets that must never be told."

He frowned at her.

Her words rang in his mind more than they should have—a truth that shone through like a North Star lighthouse in the middle of a storm, like something guiding him back home— and his senses were muddled and heightened. A crack, a scratch, a chip— a wall in his mind was starting to crumble. There was an oncoming storm about to break everything free.

Clara – Miss Allison – remained unaware of his predicament, however, and simply let her words linger in the air for the mystery that they were… that _she_ was.

"What about you?" she added. "Why are _you_ here?"

"Same as you," he answered, frowning still. She turned her head back to look at him. "I don't know either."

A fraction of a moment later, he started to stumble.

Hand to the side of his head, he leaned on the table for balance. Clara was at his side instantaneously, these faux features of her lined with worry and though her eyes held not the same brown warmth, the concern in them was genuine.

There was a rush inside him, something he had long since forgotten about and had purposely ignored for… a long, long while now. He didn't know how long—he actively tried not think of how long it has actually been. And yet, the breaking was long since overdue.

The thing about running away from your problems is that they never disappear—they only worsen or they evolve or they hurt someone else. Sometimes, they catch up to you in ways that you had never thought they could. Sometimes, it's the same problem over and over and over again and the worst part of it is that the mistake you'd called a solution was the only thing you knew how to do.

His insides felt terrible as his system recovered. He swallowed and only then did he realise the calming presence of the woman by his side. He needed to sit down.

"You okay?" she asked. "Is your pear allergy _that_ bad?"

"I guess so," he replied, fingers scratching at his head—expecting curls but finding only the short near-shaved hair atop his head.

"Headache," he explained. "I don't get those often."

"Let's go outside," she suggested. "Some fresh air should do you some good."

Leaning his full weight on her, though not by any design of his own, she practically dragged him out to the nearest balcony, which was, graciously, not as crowded as it was inside. The low light of it all made the appeal of the balcony difficult, she gathered, but she found a spot far enough away from any fuss, where they might sit down and he could calm himself.

There they sat and she observed him with a watchful eye. What could have been in that cider that it might affect him like this?

His breaths were slow, drawn out, and forced and his eyes were squeezed shut. His shoulders were rigid and he palmed his thighs through his trousers, bunching up what fabric he could grasp into his fists as the pain in his head affected him so.

"Tell me something," he blurted out.

"Tell you what?" she asked.

"Anything," he said. "Need a distraction from this headache."

"Okay, sure," she started. "What do you want me to say?"

"Who are you? What do you do?"

"Me? Uh— I travel? From time to time, at least," she answered, a small smile upon her lips at the jest that only she would understand.

"Must be nice."

"It is, yeah."

"Alone?"

"Mhm."

"How long?"

"Don't know. It's… hard to keep track," she said. Clara sighed. Her hands were atop her lap and her fingers started fumbling. She looked down as she spoke and licked her lips. "I make friends along the way sometimes but… people just leave or… it's hard to be with anyone when all you seem to do is lose them," she admitted.

Clara pressed her lips into a tight line. _Too much,_ she admonished herself. _You've said too much_.

Yet that was always the thing with her wasn't it? She was always very good at talking too much—especially when she was nervous. He looked at her, the struggle of his personal pain still in his eyes, but there rest a profound understanding in his irises as well.

 _He knew_.

"You've lost someone," he said.

"Yeah."

"I—" he started. _Cards_ , he seemed to remember for some reason. He licked his lips. "I'm sorry for your loss, I—"

"Oh God, no!" she blurted out, laughing. She brushed at her crying eyes that she hadn't realised had begun to tear up right until that moment. "No! No, he's not dead!"

"But you—"

"People you care about don't have to die for you to lose them," she told him, a sad knowing look on her face with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Death isn't always the worst thing that can happen to you."

 _You could be forgotten_ , she thought.

"What happened?"

"It's a long story," she said. "But he's okay. He's happy, I know he is."

"You love him," he said. It wasn't a question.

"More than everything," she said. She looked up at the stars and, slowly, her smile grew as she spoke of him. Yet so did the melancholy in her eyes—her profound, deep grief. "And enough to just—want him to be happy. Even if that means it's without me."

"Did he—" he was about to ask but she knew what he was going to say so she cut him off.

"Yeah. Yeah, he did."

"Then I'm sure he couldn't be _that_ happy without you."

Clara chuckled and shook her head. She wiped just beneath her eye before she could start crying and said, "I saw it. With my own two eyes, I saw it."

"Saw what?"

"Him. Happy," she said. She closed her eyes as she pictured the scene she was describing. "Smiling like I've never seen him smile before. Tears in his eyes and all the rest of it. He was just so calm and at peace and so… so… I don't know, _content_? I'd never seen him look that happy before."

"What do you mean?"

"When we went our separate ways, I—I checked up on him sometimes. He didn't know but he was always really good at missing things. He never saw me, I made sure of it. Part of me just wanted to make sure he was okay. That everything I've done to make sure that he was, wasn't for nothing."

He was looking at her intently now but she didn't see.

The story had begun to pour out of her and once it had, it was very difficult to rein it back in. Her voice was full of emotion, spoken softly as if in confession, and the heartbreak was evident in her whisper. Yet there was a struggle with the way she carried herself—a rigidity, a forced strength. For if one were truly gutted, one would fall and crumble; and yet her? She kept herself together when it was only too clear that all she wanted was to let it out—to breathe again for the words had been choked up inside her for too long.

"He got married, not long after we parted ways," she admitted.

Clara could see it so clearly, ever still even after all of the years that had passed.

 _Dawn finally breaking after a night that lasted twenty-four years._

 _A woman in bright crimson, curls reflected (gold on gold) and she glowed in the overdue sunrise, with her hands wrapped around a cloth of what looked like beams of sunlight woven into fabric—joined with his._

 _Him in black tie, a bespoke suit—his silver hair shining like morning dew kissed by the morning sun._

 _Smiling like she'd never seen him smile before._

 _Completely and totally at peace—calm and filled with joy._

 _He leaned towards her and whispered something in her ear._

 _And around them, the towers sang to their union as she witnessed from behind the pair of them, watching their light in the darkness—unknown and unseen._

' _I don't know why you do this to yourself, Clara,' Me had said._

' _No, I know,' she'd answered while she was then unable to make herself look away. 'I just wanted to be sure.'_

 _When she turned away, she never looked back._

 _It was the last time she ever saw him._

"And he just… looked so happy. He looked so happy and I—" she said, the memory of that night coming up so clearly in her mind's eye that a tear fell from each closed eye. "I want him to be. More than anyone I've ever known, he deserves it. He deserves to be happy so much and it's silly that I'm crying, I know. I'm sorry."

Clara wiped at her eyes furiously but once the tears came, she found that she couldn't stop. She smiled as she told the story though he knew, he could tell that there were simply some things that one couldn't be altogether happy about. Not wholly, not really, not truly—no matter how much you tried, no matter how much you wanted to be.

"It's just—I want him to be happy and I… I just…" she trailed on. "I wish… I wish, somehow, maybe… I wish he could've been that happy with me."

"I'm sure he was—"

"No," she said quickly, firm and resolute but full of emotion. "He wasn't. I wasn't good for him. I wasn't good to him either, I think. Not as good as I probably should've been. And this is—this is the only way I know how to keep him happy."

"You deserve to be happy too, you know," he said.

His shoulders had relaxed and he looked at her with big, sad eyes that she couldn't help but smile at. It was such a familiar expression—something that she'd missed so dearly without knowing it: someone who understood the pangs of loneliness, someone who could just look at you and they'd know.

There rested no pity in those eyes of his, no self-congratulatory stares of 'at least I'm not you'—just a genuine understanding, a fervent hope that he held for her. That, she could suppose, was something that had been hardened out of her.

"Ha," she laughed. "Nobody _deserves_ anything. I learnt that the hard way a long time ago."

"But _he_ deserves to be happy?" he asked.

"Got me there," she conceded. "But yeah, I think so. Or, okay—say he doesn't. Say he does. Whatever. But I can do this and keep away so he can live his life and be happy. I can do this for him."

"What about you?"

Clara looked down and smiled to herself. Another sad smile. And then she said, "I've already had my turn."

 _It doesn't matter now whether I'm happy or not—I'm already dead_.

They pair of them were quiet for a moment—a quiet that was practically eerie for they were supposed to be surrounded by people and yet, for the moment, the pair of them did not quite notice.

"I'm sorry," was all he could say.

"Oh God, no. No, don't be sorry. Please don't be sorry for me," she told him. She held herself and rubbed her arms. "Sorry. I'm sorry. Ha. God." Clara laughed—awkward and forced. "My mouth just runs off on me sometimes, y'know? Bloody well told you my life story and I don't even your name."

"Oswald," he said.

It was the first name that he could think of, for reasons that he could not then at that moment explain. Clara bit back a grin by biting her lip yet a smile still peeked through.

"Is that a first or a last name?" she asked him.

"Last," the disguised Doctor answered. "Basil Oswald."

"Allison Smith," she returned. She extended a hand for him to shake, which he took. "It's good to meet you."


End file.
